Gas Gauge?!??

[ScareCrow]

Well, my turn. My new, 2021 Bronco Sport, only 1400 miles, says 98 miles to empty and the gauge reads over a 1/4 tank. Suddenly, at 70mph on the expressway, I had no engine power. Pulled over. Full electrical but car would not start. Luckily a guy from the road commission stopped and gave me a gallon of gas. Car started. I went immediately to gas station and added over 15 gallons. It's a 16 gallon tank. So, bone dry. The whole time the Guage didn't moved and the miles to empty never dipped below 96. Now with the full tank, and about 10 miles driven, the gas gauge shows 3/4 tank. Gauge is moving way too fast.

I keep the tank full usually, but I found that when it displays 2 bars from full (never displays 1 bar), I add fuel it's 3-4 gallons.

I reset the miles at fill up and get about 50 miles before it's off full (2 bars).

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[Snowboardjedi]

Mine just glitched at

So whenever I get down to 50 miles, my gas gauge light obviously comes on, but then my meter goes STRAIGHT to empty and the screen literally goes down 1 mile every 1-2 seconds. So basically once the light comes on, it’s saying I have like 2 minutes max to get to a gas station. And then yesterday it happened to me at 70 miles. ?!?! The Ford I bought it from ‘can’t seem to figure it out’ and keep stalling. And also won’t give me a rental car which is another story. Does anyone else have this issue and does the way my Ford is handling it seem right?? My theory is it’s something with the microchip and they don’t want to tell me that since it’ll be months and months before that can get fixed. Any thoughts??

DTE just glitched on mine. Typically it reads in the neighborhood of 477 miles til empty after a fuel top off. This time it read

 

[Bluverish]

Anyone else figure out anything new regarding this topic? The gas gauge still seems unreliable. The only decent indicator I find is the Estimated Miles/Kilometres the vehicle may have left to drive.

For example, I'm in Ontario Canada, so I find its roughly 25- 30 bucks to fill a quarter tank. It'll confuse me when my gas gauge shows a quarter missing but then my cost of fuel only came to 16 dollars. I guess it's a nice safety margin to ensure I don't run out of fuel somewhere. It's never quite accurate compared to other vehicles I've driven.

 

[Jmuns]

Anyone else figure out anything new regarding this topic? The gas gauge still seems unreliable. The only decent indicator I find is the Estimated Miles/Kilometres the vehicle may have left to drive.

For example, I'm in Ontario Canada, so I find its roughly 25- 30 bucks to fill a quarter tank. It'll confuse me when my gas gauge shows a quarter missing but then my cost of fuel only came to 16 dollars. I guess it's a nice safety margin to ensure I don't run out of fuel somewhere. It's never quite accurate compared to other vehicles I've driven.

As someone mentioned earlier, maybe it's an analog vs digital issue. My Badlands seems pretty accurate from the readings, but can be hard to gauge from a gallon perspective in-between 3/4 and 1/4 readings. When you fill up the quarter tank how many liters are you having to put in? Don't look at the price, look at the volume. If I fill up around 1/2 it's pretty close to 8 gallons each time +/- a gallon.

 

[Bluverish]

As someone mentioned earlier, maybe it's an analog vs digital issue. My Badlands seems pretty accurate from the readings, but can be hard to gauge from a gallon perspective in-between 3/4 and 1/4 readings. When you fill up the quarter tank how many liters are you having to put in? Don't look at the price, look at the volume. If I fill up around 1/2 it's pretty close to 8 gallons each time +/- a gallon.

Yeah that's a good point, I think with the price of gas I've been more hypersensitive to the costs, I just associated it with the volume lol. Perhaps I should recognize this may also be an OCD thing .

Thanks for the response!

 

[BravoAlpha]

Mine seems to have settled down. My Badlands is 1 year old with @ 15K miles. The gage is accurate and the range is consistent. I only look at price before I get to the pump, once I’m at the pump, the decision has been made and price doesn’t matter.

I also try to never go below a 1/4 tank.

AND rotate gas stations frequently. Many of us get into routines and some vendors have better gas than others. I try to keep a mix. Because WE DONT KNOW and if you think you do, you don’t.
Many gas stations, esp rural areas, have some sloppy practices…
Lower quality gas can not only affect performance but interfere with gauges and pumps.

 

[Hot Rod Mike]

Fill it up at 3/8s

 

[Glamdring70]

Drive it steady and the system is very accurate. If you change your driving from conservative to aggressive the system calculates fuel wrong. I pumped 15.6 gallons the other day and the dash told me I had 4 miles left. It calculates roughly 25mpg so the remaining miles was off a scant little bit, on the cautious side. Normally I fill up between 50-25 remaining. Things just ended up that way and I refuse to pay the extra layer of gas taxes in the city.

 

[Atheidbr]

I posted on this thread 2 years ago, and I have a couple updates. I hope to have a real resolution soon! My Bronco Sport is still under warranty and I had to take it in for a few recalls anyway, so in the interest of killing all birds with one stone, I'm having the dealership look at the gas guage glitch. I tried to do that a little under a year ago, but the supervisor helping me told me I had to bring the vehicle in on empty when it was doing the glitch because they couldn't siphon gas. Anyway, so this time I got the vehicle to the dealership right as the glitch was happening, and they are doing a deep dive. They couldn't find anything with a cursory look, so I just gave them permission to drop the fuel tank this morning. I should have an update by mid-week next week.

I also did a little bit of experimenting too prior to this. Let it be known, when this glitch happens, YOU ARE ON EMPTY. Get to a gas station as soon as you can. How do I know this? I challenged it one night, thinking it could just be a digital display glitch. I did manage to drive about 15 miles before I ran completely out of fuel, but I did indeed run completely out of fuel.

To those curious, I've attached a video of the gas guage glitch. It happens about 8–10 seconds into this video. Notice how fast the miles to empty starts counting down too after it happens. I've experienced it anywhere between 60–90 miles to empty, and it's been consistent and reproducible the entire time I've had the vehicle.

 

[Mark S.]

Weird!

 

[Atheidbr]

I posted on this thread 2 years ago, and I have a couple updates. I hope to have a real resolution soon! My Bronco Sport is still under warranty and I had to take it in for a few recalls anyway, so in the interest of killing all birds with one stone, I'm having the dealership look at the gas guage glitch. I tried to do that a little under a year ago, but the supervisor helping me told me I had to bring the vehicle in on empty when it was doing the glitch because they couldn't siphon gas. Anyway, so this time I got the vehicle to the dealership right as the glitch was happening, and they are doing a deep dive. They couldn't find anything with a cursory look, so I just gave them permission to drop the fuel tank this morning. I should have an update by mid-week next week.

I also did a little bit of experimenting too prior to this. Let it be known, when this glitch happens, YOU ARE ON EMPTY. Get to a gas station as soon as you can. How do I know this? I challenged it one night, thinking it could just be a digital display glitch. I did manage to drive about 15 miles before I ran completely out of fuel, but I did indeed run completely out of fuel.

To those curious, I've attached a video of the gas guage glitch. It happens about 8–10 seconds into this video. Notice how fast the miles to empty starts counting down too after it happens. I've experienced it anywhere between 60–90 miles to empty, and it's been consistent and reproducible the entire time I've had the vehicle.

Final Update: After about 11 days in the shop, my gas gauge issue seems to be resolved. I've driven around and tested it. At 50 miles to empty, the gas gauge behaves completely normal now. The fix however was not easy. Ford replaced the entire fuel tank and I believe fuel pump as well. It was all covered under my warranty, but dropping a fuel tank I understand takes some work.

If you have this issue and are determined to get it fixed, expect your car to be in the shop for at least a week. I would also recommend videoing the glitch if you can and getting it to the dealership as the glitch is happening. It'll take some coordination, but the good news is there is a resolution.

Good luck everyone! And happy driving!

 

[KidWiff]

Did they say what the actual issue was ?
Just caught this thread today and wondering if there is some sort of redundant gas fuel level sensor/system in the BS and a significant difference between what each was reading... The gauge was reading one sensor and the mpg/miles to empty sensor was reading another... just a WAG

 

[Mark S.]

I'm glad you were able to get your problem resolved. I would, however, caution against driving your car with less than a gallon in the tank (you'll find this caution in your owner's manual). The reason is that the fuel pump in the gas tank relies on fuel for cooling. With less than a gallon in the tank there is less fuel mass to absorb heat, and the fuel pump will run hotter. Heat is the bane of electric motors; the hotter it runs the shorter its service life. As you noted, dropping the fuel tank to replace the fuel pump is quite a job.

 

[Atheidbr]

Did they say what the actual issue was ?
Just caught this thread today and wondering if there is some sort of redundant gas fuel level sensor/system in the BS and a significant difference between what each was reading... The gauge was reading one sensor and the mpg/miles to empty sensor was reading another... just a WAG

Sorry I missed this inquiry! They did not. I asked a couple times, but never heard back. Now that I've gone through a few fuel tanks since I got it back though, I've noticed something curious. This new fuel tank is definitely bigger. Perhaps the original fuel tank was the wrong size, maybe...or damaged with a dent that prevented it from filling all the way? Totally just guessing at this point, but this new fuel tank definitely holds more fuel.

 

[Atheidbr]

I'm glad you were able to get your problem resolved. I would, however, caution against driving your car with less than a gallon in the tank (you'll find this caution in your owner's manual). The reason is that the fuel pump in the gas tank relies on fuel for cooling. With less than a gallon in the tank there is less fuel mass to absorb heat, and the fuel pump will run hotter. Heat is the bane of electric motors; the hotter it runs the shorter its service life. As you noted, dropping the fuel tank to replace the fuel pump is quite a job.

I appreciate this caution. Driving on a low tank is not something I voluntarily do or would recommend either. With the glitch, I started fueling up when when my mileage got close to "100 miles to empty." It was impossible to actually know how much fuel I had left, but I'm grateful those days are behind me and I now have the benefit of being able to knowingly adhere to this caution. No regrets testing, tinkering, documenting and draining the old fuel system though. I fully think documenting and exploring that are the reason Ford was willing to do all this work for free with absolutely no push back. I thought even with a warranty, they might push back a little, but nope.

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